Milk could become target of terrorists Tampering with supply could be lethal, report says: PALO ALTO, Calif. - In a potential bioterror crisis as devastating as an anthrax or smallpox outbreak, deliberate contamination of the nation's milk supply with the toxin that causes botulism could poison several thousand people, Stanford researchers

But the same study estimates that early detection measures costing just 1 to 2 cents per gallon of milk could squelch this threat. "When you consider the deadliest substance known to man and combine it with the large-scale storage, processing and rapid consumption of milk, you end up with a truly frightening scenario," said Lawrence Wein, professor of management science at Stanford's Graduate School of Business. Working with graduate student Yifan Liu, Wein devised a mathematical model to explore the effects of a planned release of botulinum toxin at various points in the cows-to-consumers supply chain of a single milk-processing facility. Their findings were published online Tuesday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The researchers based their estimates of silo size, distribution speed and other key parameters on the California dairy industry, which produces more than a fifth of the nation's milk. They calculated that just one gram of the toxin could poison about 150,000 people. More than half the people who drank the tainted milk could die from the toxin, which can kill adults in quantities as small as a millionth of a gram. But the very features of milk processing that make it an ideal bioterror target - large-scale processing and rapid distribution - also suggest that detection methods could be introduced economically. "The economies of scale that allow this to happen also allow the testing to be done on a large scale so it doesn't cost very much," Wein said. Under a scenario based on material published on several jihadist Web sites, terrorists would buy toxin from an overseas black market, mix a few grams of it with a sludgy substance and dump the contents into an unlocked farm tank or a milk truck on its way to a processing facility. Wein recommends introducing a botulinum detection test during the 45-minute window in which milk trucks wait for their contents to get drained into silos for antibiotic residue testing. Developed by Maryland-based BioVeris, the test for botulinum and other biological agents is currently used to screen milk served to U.S. soldiers. The Stanford research - originally set to be published on Memorial Day - drew fear from the federal government, which called it a "road map for terrorists" and urged the academy to halt its publication.